• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.260-262
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• 2004

In agreement with the results of previous MP2 calculations by Sauers, B3LYP, CASSCF, and CASPT2 calculations on the parent 2-carbena-1,3-dioxolane show that it fragments to ethylene plus $CO_2$ by a concerted pathway with only a small energy barrier. Not only is fragmentation via stepwise C-O bond cleavage computed to be a much higher energy pathway, but the singlet diradical that would be an intermediate along such a reaction path is not even computed to be a local minimum on the potential energy surface.